Source; SNGLR
"While it is reasonable to state that you have not seen any evidence for God’s existence, it is illogical and incorrect to assert that no such evidence exists.”---Vox Day
The astonishing fact is that life began on earth as soon as life became possible. It would require vastly more time than the whole universe has existed for life to originate in a random matter. And that isn't even the biggest problem. In random assembly, numourous amounts of unhelpful variations would have occurred, and nearly countless universes would be needed just to store them. The only answer would be to do it exactly right every time. Another way of putting it is that the odds of life appearing randomly, according to the science we know, are the odds of winning the Powerball lottery every week for 1000 years while buying only one ticket per week. Seems we may think that events are random nearly because we don't understand the contingencies that bring them about. Even Einstein wondered whether there was a hidden determinism involved, which of course implies a determinator.”---Jeffrey B. Russell
Deist evolution proposes that the seed of the universe was created by God in a highly ordered initial state, with pre-designed physical laws so finally tuned that life would inevitably flower. In this way, life as a latent effect was hidden within the formal cause of a pregnant universe, but the principal cause is the complex initial order of the pre-designed nature of the universe that is guiding the process in a meaningful and purposeful fashion. Order does not arise out of disorder but, has made manifest beautifully over time.
Science informs us that the likelihood of random physical forces assembling the cosmos is as close to zero as we can get. Yet in the cosmos an organizing principle exists, since we observe organization. Also, an informing principal exists, since we observed information. In fact, the current evidence of physics, chemistry and biology points to the existence of a cosmic purpose, hence a designer, more now than over a half-century ago.
This of course introduces a broad spectrum of materialistic, philosophical and theological interpretations on the existence of God. Yet, there exists a serious denial of the existence of God built upon a worldview and a particular scientific theory of evolution, and these in turn rest upon a set of philosophical assumptions concerning epistemology and metaphysics, which ranges from creationism to atheistic naturalism. Atheists don’t have an absence of transcendent belief. They believe very strongly, in naturalism. In fact, it can be said they worship a trinity of sorts: A Father (time), a Son (matter and energy) and a Spirit (Darwinism). Good and evil are reduced to solely the survival of the species, devoid of moral meaning(1).
To be more precise, technically speaking, the unholy trinity haunting much of the debate about evolution, especially from the side of those who reject religion on account of evolution, consists of:
-Nominalism: the theory or belief that only concrete things exist, abstract entities, such as species, do not. Though appealing at first glance, it contains some nasty problems, such as the fact that most ordinary discourse either becomes meaningless or turns into something quite different from what the speaker intended. Mathematics specifically, the software of reality, lives and breaths abstract entities.
-Reductionism: the theory or belief that all scientific knowledge can ultimately be reduced to basic physics, including human consciousness. However, category mistakes, such as certain types of "reduction" make no logical sense, it unscientifically ignores.
-Naturalism: the theory or belief that only natural forces and entities make up the world, that science alone is competent to examine things; that there is no non-scientific knowledge of the world. Naturalism is based on two key notions:
a) the canon of science: an inventory of the things that are acceptable for use in scientific explanations-that is, are real in a scientific sense, and real for the purposes of science.
b) the scientific method: the set of procedures and explanatory methods allowed in scientific work.
If one makes the philosophical postulation that the canon of science is coextensive with the canon of reality, then one steers toward metaphysical naturalism. This, of course, directly influences one's interpretation of evolution. On the other hand, if one assumes that the canon of science is a subset of the canon of reality, one will likely steer toward a theistic interpretation of evolution.
How do the aforementioned versions, and the assumptions made at each, affect the philosophical and theological interpretations of evolution? This is a crucial question, because many who advocate a particular interpretation are unaware of the assumptions that underlie it.
Metaphysical naturalism is an excellent gauge of the point being made here, the ideological nature of many scientific controversies over evolution. This is due to the fact that metaphysical naturalism tends to be associated with the overall particular attitude of those who reject religion, one that says: I know what's real, so all the germane facts, such as those found in the ID theory, are irrelevant. In other words, it does not matter what evidence(2) may be adduced, one won't change their mind anyway. This leaves one to ponder the question of whether science allows one to masquerade emotion for reason by becoming a sort of private bailiwick where any rules can be made; or to make the search for truth ironic by basing it only on philosophically determined (meaning having the same hallmarks of being religious-like) and selected empirical observations.
Those who accept metaphysical naturalism generally reject any form of religion as superfluous, since they believe that Neo-Darwinian evolution can explain all life, and physics all of biology(3). There position is that although many details remain to be worked out, it is already evident that all the objective phenomena of the history of life can be explained by purely naturalistic or, in a proper sense of the sometimes abused words--materialistic factors. They are presented as readily explicable on the basis of differential reproduction in populations (natural selection), and the mainly random interplay of the known processes of heredity (random mutations). Therefore, man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.
This opens the debate to the epistemological problem of whether it is possible to define truth and knowledge in a consistent fashion under the philosophical assumptions of the unholy trinity. For example, as Jon Haught states: "...to accept the truth of the evolutionary selectionist explanation of human intelligence, you have tacitly introduced something extraneous to pure Darwinism.” Which means that those who claim science has failed to determine the existence of God do so, at bottom, on their faith in it their own assumptions. In other words, they employ to justify their beliefs the very same standard or methodological method they condemn their opposition of using! This of course leads directly to the question of what philosophical assumptions the conduct of science actually requires.
What is of primary take-away from all this is that all interpretations of evolution make assumptions about the levels at which human knowledge exists. There is no science without philosophical assumptions, especially about the canon of reality and the scientific method.
Of particular interest is the fact that some interpretations of evolution concentrate on a favored scientific theory and worldview, both of which operate primarily at the level of direct observation. If one views all knowledge as being at that level, then collisions between theology and science are inevitable. Such conflict or contradictions between theology and science need a better understanding of the assumptions they make at the base level. It is easy today to fall into a faith in a worldview that pretends to be scientific but that is ultimately insufficient when reviewed with an informed sound critical approach.
"If the universe caused itself, then wouldn't it have had to exist before it came to exist?"-- William Lane Craig
“A Creator who discloses himself to his creatures would overwhelm them, depriving them of their freedom and absorbing them again into himself. It would betoken a deficiency of love within the Creator, which is impossible for a benevolent one.”--- David Walsh
1. Someone who believes that matter is the ultimate reality is, for all practical purposes, a pantheist. This had been a common theme to all our foundational ancient philosophies, which were essentially a pantheistic view of the universe. This pantheism prevented any order in the universe from being complete, as Stanley Jaki reasoned. The epistemological implication from this is that all knowing must now be seen as perspective, inseparably linked to elemental emotions, competitive rivalries, subconscious instincts--all biological impulses for power and domination---therefore domination, cunning and brutality, to paraphrase Nietzsche, are not evil but simply expressions of vitality, as a means of self-creation, or to quote Nietzsche: “No cruelty, no feast”
2. The odds against the cosmos producing intelligence are vanishingly huge. For example, if the value of the weak force varied by 10 to the 100th power life could not exist. To put that into perspective, by comparison, the number of particles estimated in the whole universe is about 10 to the 90th power. In fact the other 3 constants of science in the universe must fall within a narrow range for atoms to exist at all. Another way of putting it is that the odds of the universe being so finally tuned as to allow life as we know it are the same as a deck of shuffled cards being dealt out in exact order from ace of spades to deuce of clubs over ten times in a row. The odds of doing that just once out of 4.5 times is 10 to the 66th power (1 followed by 66 zeros).
3. One example of the problem glossed over is that in the history of basic anatomical designs, the biggest gap in the fossil record is in the Cambrian explosion about 542 million years ago and such as found in the Burgess Shale and Chengjiang discoveries. Almost everything happened in the geological moment just before, and almost nothing since. Until that is the very rapid development of Homo Sapiens. In other words, 4 billion years after the formation of the earth almost all the basic forms of hard body animals suddenly appeared. Another example is that after 66 million years and the evolution of thousands of distinct species, all mammalian hearts have retained the same arrangement, that is, a common, basic design. Why has evolution not produced, through billions of mutations, some hard variations, other than size, among the radically different kinds of mammals? Another example would be that Chimpanzees share 99% of human DNA. Why are we so radically different? The human brain obtained its present day size and shape somewhere between 100,000 and 35,000 years ago. Similarly, evolution required 66 million years to produce the chimpanzee brain that can learn little more than simple sign language. Evolutionary theory does not seem to have a readily apparent answer, explained by evolution as we know it. Seems it's more difficult to reconcile atheism with science then to reconcile Intelligent Design, or for that matter Christianity with science.
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